Green Wombat

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger just made a surprise appearance at
the Solar Power 2006 conference in San Jose. No surprise, actually. If you’re running for re-election on your environmental record, showing your green cred to 6,000 solar energy advocates is a no-brainer. The audience gave the governor the rock-star treatment, leaping to
their feet and holding their digital cameras aloft as he entered the
conference hall. No surprise there either. Schwarzenegger, more than
any other politician, has boosted the fortunes of the solar industry
with his million solar homes initiative and the landmark global warming
legislation he signed into law last month.

The governor spoke for less than 10 minutes, pumping up California’s
$2.8 billion incentive program to subsidize home solar systems. "This
will provide 3,000 megawatts of clean energy, of solar energy," said
Schwarzenegger. "We need a lot of energy here in California. It’s clean
energy, that means we’re going to reduce our output of greenhouse gases
by three million tons. We can be pro environment and be pro business.”

The only news he committed was to announce a new website for Californians wanting to get with the million solar homes program.

Speaking of solar, Jeff Davis, my fellow assistant managing editor at Business 2.0, has an interesting post on Waterlog about a Sydney company, Solar Sailor, that has won a contract to build solar-powered ferries that will start criss-crossing  San Francisco Bay in 2008. As Jeff writes:

The ferries will run on as much on sun and wind power as they do diesel fuel—and will emit half the pollutants of a similar sized conventional ferry.  The triple-hulled vessel will have a 45-foot high retractable wing covered in solar panels that can generate 20 kilowatts of electricity to help take the load off the two diesel engines.  The wing also generates some 170 hp on its own as a sail. When conditions get hairy and the wind hits 30+ knots (that’s when many sailboats start to de-mast), the wings fold up, all beetle-like.

Way cool. The parallels between the semiconductor industry and the burgeoning solar industry are many, and this strikes me as emblematic of another similarity: just as microprocessors eventually became powerful and cheap enough to put into a host of everyday objects – cars, cell phones, teddy bears – solar cells are too beginning to appear in products beyond suburban rooftops.

But for now let’s just leave it at Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!

In another sign of Silicon Valley’s growing stake in solar energy,  VantagePoint Venture Partners will soon announce an investment in a 100 megawatt solar power plant. VantagePoint’s John Woolard disclosed the investment today at the Solar Power 2006 conference in San Jose.

The investment is notable on a couple counts. So far Silicon Valley
has preferred to invest in companies producing photovoltaic panels and
other solar technology for homes and offices. Valley VCs have stayed
away from solar thermal power plants, large facilities which use solar
radiation to heat liquids or other substances to create steam that
drives turbines to generate electricity. It’s the solar equivalent of
investing in a computer chip factory as thermal solar plants typically
cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. Solar thermal plants
plug into the power grid and sell their electricity to regional
utilities.

"We look at things that are highly disruptive and can exist in a
world of declining subsidiaries," Woolard told a standing room audience
of several hundred people at a session on investing in solar energy.

Woolard didn’t identify the solar power plant company, the
facility’s location or the size of the investment and left before we
could corner him for more details. When asked if such an investment put
his firm in the position of becoming a big project financier, he said
VantagePoint’s strategy was to invest in the technology and engineering
team, leaving the financing of plant construction to other investors.

After the oil shock of the late 1970s, a slew of experimental solar
power plants were built, including several in the California desert.
But when oil prices subsequently fell to record lows in the 1980s, the
projects were largely abandoned. The return of sky-high oil prices,
global warming fears and laws to cap greenhouse gas emissions have
reignited interest in solar thermal plants and several are under
construction in Europe and the United States.

If the blow-out trade show is an unmistakeable sign that an industry is ready for prime time, then this is solar energy’s year. More than 6,000 people are packing Solar Power 2006 at the San Jose convention center, and more than 160 companies have set up booths. It’s all a bit deja vu of the optimism and giddiness that pervaded the giant Consumer Electronics Show during the dot-com boom – minus the Vegas setting and the booth babes, of course.

The opening session this morning focused on the future of solar technology. SunPower founder Richard Swanson predicted the falling cost and growing efficiency of solar cells would accelerate in the next few years, outstripping previous projections. He said SunPower, the Silicon Valley subsidiary of chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor, would announce a solar cell this fall with an efficiency of 23 percent, which appears to be a record for a commerial product. And he predicted that by 2013, the cost of a solar module will drop to $1.44 a watt, making photovoltaics close to competitive with conventional power sources.

The silicon shortage has slowed the dramatic fall in solar power prices of recent years. But Australian solar power pioneer Martin Green told conference-goers the shortage has opened the door to develop next-generation technologies such as thin-film solar. That technology deposits solar cells on a  film that is 100th the thickness of traditional silicon wafers. His team at the University of New South Wales in Sydney is pursuing research into thin film technologies that could boost the efficiency of solar power to as high as 60 percent.

Google, as everyone knows by now, plans to install the nation’s largest corporate solar array at its Mountain View headquarters. The rooftop system will produce an estimated 1.6 megawatts of power.

After covering the Googleplex with solar panels, the sun will provide about 30 percent of the campus’ power. As my colleague Michael Copeland points out in his Dawn Patrol blog, Google’s motives are not entirely altruistic. The search giant’s data centers, and those of its competitors at Microsoft and Yahoo, consume an enormous amount of expensive energy. Solar isn’t close to packing the punch needed to power a data center, but the day may not be far off given the money being poured into Silicon Valley solar startups pursuing technological breakthroughs. Look for more on this and Silicon Valley’s solar boom in an upcoming Business 2.0 feature story written by Michael and Tom McNichol for the magazine’s November issue.

Google’s move is good news for the solar biz and Silicon Valley. The question is, are Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison going to sit back and let the Google boys boast about having the biggest array in the Valley? Come on all you tech titans, forget about whose Woodside mansion is more massive or yacht is longer. Show us your panels.

Just in time for the Solar Power 2006 conference getting under way in San Jose, SunPower today unveiled its lastest high-efficiency solar panel. The Silicon Valley company, a subsidiary of chipmaker Cypress Semiconductor,  says its new panel will produce 315 watts, or about  50 percent more power per square foot than conventional solar panels. That means a typical rooftop solar energy system will use half as many panels in about half the space.

The SPR-315 panels, which go on sale in early-to-mid 2007, use SunPower’s next generation solar cells.

Trade shows exist to produce press releases about the latest and
greatest gizmos, and I could blog about them until I’m blue in the
face. But what strikes me as notable here is the fact that solar
companies have begun to even make product announcements. Long a cottage
industry, the solar business didn’t have a lot of innovation  to
trumpet in years past. That’s changing fast, and developing the most
efficient, affordable and eye-pleasing technology will be a big
competitive advantage once companies begin selling solar panels like
designer kitchens.

Originally uploaded by lowerlighter.

Hundreds of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and policymakers gather in San Jose this week for Solar Power 2006, billed as the nation’s largest solar energy conference.
The agenda is here. After pre-conference workshops today, Solar Power 2006 offically opens Tuesday morning. Sessions at the four-day event range from the geeky – Silicon Feedstock Manufacturing Developments – to the forward-looking – California: The World’s Third Largest Solar Market and Growing. One panel discussion that should be well-attended is What’s In, What’s Hot: Investing Opportunities in Solar Power, featuring VCs, angel investors and hedge fund managers. The wombat will be blogging from the conference beginning Wednesday.